See Literature on John, § 40, of this
vol.; Life and Character of John, §§
41–43, of this vol.; Theology of John, §
72, pp. 549 sqq.

The best comes last. The fourth Gospel is the Gospel
of Gospels, the holy of holies in the New Testament. The favorite
disciple and bosom friend of Christ, the protector of his mother, the
survivor of the apostolic age was pre-eminently qualified by nature and
grace to give to the church the inside view of that most wonderful
person that ever walked on earth. In his early youth he had absorbed
the deepest words of his Master, and treasured them in a faithful
heart; in extreme old age, yet with the fire and vigor of manhood, he
reproduced them under the influence of the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him
and led him, as well as the other disciples, into "the whole
truth."

His Gospel is the golden sunset of the age of
inspiration, and sheds its lustre into the second and all succeeding
centuries of the church. It was written at Ephesus when Jerusalem lay
in ruins, when the church had finally separated from the synagogue,
when "the Jews" and the Christians were two distinct races, when Jewish
and Gentile believers had melted into a homogeneous Christian
community, a little band in a hostile world, yet strong in faith, full
of hope and joy, and certain of victory.

For a satisfactory discussion of the difficult
problems involved in this Gospel and its striking contrast with the
Synoptic Gospels, we must keep in view the fact that Christ communed
with the apostles after as well as before his visible departure, and
spoke to them through that "other Advocate" whom he sent to them from
the Father, and who brought to remembrance all things he had said unto
them.10361036John 14:26; 16:18. Comp. Matt.
10:19, 20; Luke 12:12; Acts 4:8. Here lies the guarantee of the truthfulness of
a picture which no human artist could have drawn without divine
inspiration. Under any other view the fourth Gospel, and indeed the
whole New Testament, becomes the strangest enigma in the history of
literature and incapable of any rational solution.

John and the Synoptists.

If John wrote long after the Synoptists, we could,
of course, not expect from him a repetition of the story already so
well told by three independent witnesses. But what is surprising is the
fact that, coming last, he should produce the most original of all the
Gospels.

The transition from Matthew to Mark, and from Mark
to Luke is easy and natural; but in passing from any of the Synoptists
to the fourth Gospel we breathe a different atmosphere, and feel as if
we were suddenly translated from a fertile valley to the height of a
mountain with a boundless vision over new scenes of beauty and
grandeur. We look in vain for a genealogy of Jesus, for an account of
his birth, for the sermons of the Baptist, for the history of the
temptation in the wilderness, the baptism in the Jordan, and the
transfiguration on the Mount, for a list of the Twelve, for the
miraculous cures of demoniacs. John says nothing of the institution of
the church and the sacraments; though he is full of the mystical union
and communion which is the essence of the church, and presents the
spiritual meaning of baptism and the Lord’s Supper
(John 3 and John 6). He omits the ascension, though it is promised
through Mary Magdalene (20:17). He has not a word of the Sermon on the
Mount, and the Lord’s Prayer, none of the inimitable
parables about the kingdom of heaven, none of those telling answers to
the entangling questions of the Pharisees. He omits the prophecies of
the downfall of Jerusalem and the end of the world, and most of those
proverbial, moral sentences and maxims of surpassing wisdom which are
strung together by the Synoptists like so many sparkling diamonds.

But in the place of these Synoptical records John
gives us an abundance of new matter of equal, if not greater, interest
and importance. Right at the threshold we are startled, as by a peal of
thunder from the depths, of eternity: "In the beginning was the Word."
And as we proceed we hear about the creation of the world, the shining
of the true light in darkness, the preparatory revelations, the
incarnation of the Logos, the testimony of the Baptist to the Lamb of
God. We listen with increasing wonder to those mysterious discourses
about the new birth of the Spirit, the water of life, the bread of life
from heaven, about the relation of the eternal and only-begotten Son to
the Father, to the world, and to believers, the mission of the Holy
Spirit, the promise of the many mansions in heaven, the farewell to the
disciples, and at last that sacerdotal prayer which brings us nearest
to the throne and the beating heart of God. John alone reports the
interviews with Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, and the Greek
foreigners. He records six miracles not mentioned by the Synoptists,
and among them the two greatest—the changing of water
into wine and the raising of Lazarus from the grave. And where he meets
the Synoptists, as in the feeding of the five thousand, he adds the
mysterious discourse on the spiritual feeding of believers by the bread
of life which has been going on ever since. He makes the nearest
approach to his predecessors in the closing chapters on the betrayal,
the denial of Peter, the trial before the ecclesiastical and civil
tribunals, the crucifixion and resurrection, but even here he is more
exact and circumstantial, and adds, interesting details which bear the
unmistakable marks of personal observation.

He fills out the ministry of Christ in Judaea,
among the hierarchy and the people of Jerusalem, and extends it over
three years; while the Synoptists seem to confine it to one year and
dwell chiefly on his labors among the peasantry of Galilee. But on
close inspection John leaves ample room for the Galilaean, and the
Synoptists for the Judaean ministry. None of the Gospels is a complete
biography. John expressly disclaims, this (20:31). Matthew implies
repeated visits to the holy city when he makes Christ exclaim: "O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how often would I have gathered thy
children together" (23:37; comp. 27:57). On the other hand John records
several miracles in Cana, evidently only as typical examples of many
(2:1 sqq.; 4:47 sqq.; 6:1 sqq.). But in Jerusalem the great conflict
between light and darkness, belief and unbelief, was most fully
developed and matured to the final crisis; and this it was one of his
chief objects to describe.

The differences between John and the Synoptists
are many and great, but there are no contradictions.

The Occasion.

Irenaeus, who, as a native of Asia Minor and a
spiritual grand-pupil of John, is entitled to special consideration,
says: "Afterward" [i.e., after Matthew, Mark, and Luke] "John,
the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did
himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia."10371037Adv. Haer., III., cap.
1, § 2. In
another place he makes the rise of the Gnostic heresy the prompting
occasion of the composition.10381038Ibid. III. 11,
1.

A curious tradition, which probably contains a
grain of truth, traces the composition to a request of
John’s fellow-disciples and elders of Ephesus. "Fast
with me," said John, according to the Muratorian fragment (170), "for
three days from this time" [when the request was made], "and whatever
shall be revealed to each of us" [concerning my composing the Gospel],
"let us relate it to one another. On the same night it was revealed to
Andrew, one of the apostles, that John should relate all things in his
own name, aided by the revision of all.10391039"Ut recognoscentibus
omnibus, Joannes suo nomine cuncta describeret. ... What wonder is it
then that John brings forward every detail with so much emphasis, even
in his Epistles, saying of himself, What we have seen with our eyes,
and heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, these things have
we written unto you. For so he professes that he was not only an
eyewitness, but also a hearer, and moreover a writer of all the
wonderful works of the Lord in their historical order."10401040 "Sic enim non solum visorem, sed et auditorem, sed et scriptorem
omnium mirabilium Domini per ordinem profitetur." See the Latin text as published by Tregelles, also in
Charteris, l.c., p. 3, and the translation of Westcott,
History of the Canon, p. 187.

The mention of Andrew in this fragment is
remarkable, for he was associated with John as a pupil of the Baptist
and as the first called to the school of Christ (John 1:35–40). He was also prominent in other
ways and stood next to the beloved three, or even next to his brother
Peter in the catalogues of the apostles.10411041Matt. 10:2; Luke 6:14; Mark
3:16; 13:3; John 1:41; 12:22; Acts 1:13.

Victorinus of Pettau (d. about 304), in the
Scholia on the Apocalypse, says that John wrote the Gospel after the
Apocalypse, in consequence of the spread of the Gnostic heresy and at
the request of "all the bishops from the neighboring provinces."10421042 Quoted by Westcott and
Hilgenfeld. I will add the original from Migne, Patrol., V. 333:
"Cum enim essent Valentinus et Cerinthus,
et Ebion, et caeteri scholae satanae, diffusi per orbem, convenerunt ad
illum de finitimis provinciis omnes episcopi, et compulerunt eum, ut et
ipse testimonium coscriberet."

Jerome, on the basis of a similar tradition,
reports that John, being constrained by his brethren to write,
consented to do so if all joined in a fast and prayer to God, and after
this fast, being saturated with revelation (revelatione
saturatus), he indited the heaven-sent preface: "In the beginning
was the Word."10431043 Preface to Com in
Matt.

Possibly those fellow-disciples and pupils who
prompted John to write his Gospel, were the same who afterward added
their testimony to the genuineness of the book, speaking in the plural
("we know that his witness is true," 21:24), one of them acting as scribe
("I suppose," 21:25).

The outward occasion does not exclude, of course,
the inward prompting by the Holy Spirit, which is in fact implied in
this tradition, but it shows how far the ancient church was from such a
mechanical theory of inspiration as ignores or denies the human and
natural factors in the composition of the apostolic writings. The
preface of Luke proves the same.

The Object.

The fourth Gospel does not aim at a complete
biography of Christ, but distinctly declares that Jesus wrought "many
other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in
this book" (John 20:30;
comp. 21:25).

The author plainly states his object, to which all
other objects must be subordinate as merely incidental, namely, to lead
his readers to the faith "that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God; and that believing they may have life in his name" (20:31).
This includes three points: (1) the Messiahship of Jesus, which was of
prime importance to the Jews, and was the sole or at least the chief
aim of Matthew, the Jewish Evangelist; (2) the Divine Sonship of Jesus,
which was the point to be gained with the Gentiles, and which Luke, the
Gentile Evangelist, had also in view; (3) the practical benefit of such
faith, to gain true, spiritual, eternal life in Him and through Him who
is the personal embodiment and source of eternal life.

To this historico-didactic object all others which
have been mentioned must be subordinated. The book is neither polemic
and apologetic, nor supplementary, nor irenic, except incidentally and
unintentionally as it serves all these purposes. The writer wrote in
full view of the condition and needs of the church at the close of the
first century, and shaped his record accordingly, taking for granted a
general knowledge of the older Gospels, and refuting indirectly, by the
statement of facts and truths, the errors of the day. Hence there is
some measure of truth in those theories which have made an incidental
aim the chief or only aim of the book.

1. The anti-heretical theory was started by
Irenaeus. Being himself absorbed in the controversy with Gnosticism and
finding the strongest weapons in John, he thought that
John’s motive was to root out the error of Cerinthus
and of the Nicolaitans by showing that "there is one God who made all
things by his word; and not, as they say, one who made the world, and
another, the Father of the Lord."10441044Adv. Haer., III. 11,
1. Jerome adds the
opposite error of Ebionism, Ewald that of the disciples of the
Baptist.

No doubt the fourth Gospel, by the positive
statement of the truth, is the most effective refutation of Gnostic
dualism and doketism, which began to raise its head in Asia Minor
toward the close of the first century. It shows the harmony of the
ideal Christ of faith and the real Christ of history, which the ancient
and modern schools of Gnosticism are unable to unite in one individual.
But it is not on this account a polemical treatise, and it even had by
its profound speculation a special attraction for Gnostics and
philosophical rationalists, from Basilides down to Baur. The ancient
Gnostics made the first use of it and quoted freely from the prologue,
e.g., the passage: "The true light, which enlighteneth every
man, was coming into the world" (1:9).10451045 Basilides in Hippolytus,
Ref. Haer., VII. 22.

The polemical aim is more apparent in the first
Epistle of John, which directly warns against the anti-Christian errors
then threatening the church, and may be called a doctrinal and
practical postscript to the Gospel.

2. The supplementary theory. Clement of Alexandria
(about 200) states, on the authority of "presbyters of an earlier
generation," that John, at the request of his friends and the prompting
of the divine Spirit, added a spiritual Gospel to the older
bodily Gospels which set forth the outward facts.10461046 In Eusebius, H.
E., VI. 14 (quoting from the Hypotyposes):τὸν
Ἰωάννην
ἔσχατον
συνιδόντα
ὅτι τὰ
σωματικὰ
ἐν τοῖς
εὐαγγελίοις
δεδήλωται
προτραπέντα
ὑπὸ τῶν
γνωρίμων[i.e., either well known friends, or
distinguished, notable men], πνεύματι
θεοφορηθέντα,
πνευματικὸν
ποιῆσαι
εὐαγγέλιον. Origen had a similar view, namely, that John alone among
the Evangelists clearly teaches the divinity of Christ. Tom. 1:6 in
Joan. (Opp., IV. 6). The distinction is
ingenious. John is more spiritual and ideal than the Synoptists, and he
represents as it were the esoteric tradition as distinct from the
exoteric tradition of the church. Eusebius records also as a current
opinion that John intended to supply an amount of the earlier period of
Christ’s ministry which was omitted by the other
Evangelists.10471047H. E., III. 24. Jerome
repeats this view and connects it with the antiheretical aim, De
vir. illustr., c. 9, comp. Com. in Matt. Proaem. Theodore of
Mopsuestia thought that John intended to supplement the Synoptists
chiefly by the discourses on the divinity of Christ. See
Fritzsche’s ed. of fragments of his Commentaries on
the New Test., Turici, p. 19 sq. (quoted by Hilgenfeld,
Einleitung, p. 696). John is undoubtedly a most welcome
supplementer both in matter and spirit, and furnishes in part the key
for the full understanding of the Synoptists, yet he repeats many
important events, especially in the closing chapters, and his Gospel is
as complete as any.10481048 Godet expresses the same view
(I. 862): "Cette intention de
compléter les récits antérieurs, soit
au point de vue historique, comme l’a pensé
Eusébe, soit sous un rapport plus spirituel, comme
l’a déclaré Clément
d’Alexandrie, est donc parfaitement fondée
en fait; nous la constatons commne un but secondaire at, pour mieux
dire, comme moyen servant au but principal."

3. The Irenic tendency-theory is a modern
Tübingen invention. It is assumed that the fourth Gospel is
purely speculative or theological, the last and crowning literary
production which completed the process of unifying Jewish and Gentile
Christianity and melting them into the one Catholic church of the
second century.

No doubt it is an Irenicon of the church in the
highest and best sense of the term, and a prophecy of the church of the
future, when all discords of Christendom past and present will be
harmonized in the perfect union of Christians with Christ, which is the
last object of his sacerdotal prayer. But it is not an Irenicon at the
expense of truth and facts.

In carrying out their hypothesis the
Tübingen critics have resorted to the wildest fictions. It
is said that the author depreciated the Mosaic dispensation and
displayed jealousy of Peter. How in the world could this promote peace?
It would rather have defeated the object. But there is no shadow of
proof for such an assertion. While the author opposes the unbelieving
Jews, he shows the highest reverence for the Old Testament, and derives
salvation from the Jews. Instead of showing jealousy of Peter, he
introduces his new name at the first interview with Jesus (1:42), reports his great confession even more
fully than Matthew (John 6:68, 69), puts him at the head of the list of
the apostles (21:2), and
gives him his due prominence throughout down to the last interview when
the risen Lord committed to him the feeding of his sheep (21:15–19). This misrepresentation is of a
piece with the other Tübingen myth adopted by Renan, that
the real John in the Apocalypse pursues a polemical aim against Paul
and deliberately excludes him from the rank of the twelve Apostles. And
yet Paul himself, in the acknowledged Epistle to the Galatians,
represents John as one of the three pillar-apostles who recognized his
peculiar gift for the apostolate of the Gentiles and extended to him
the right hand of fellowship.

Analysis.

The object of John determined the selection and
arrangement of the material. His plan is more clear and systematic than
that of the Synoptists. It brings out the growing conflict between
belief and unbelief, between light and darkness, and leads step by step
to the great crisis of the cross, and to the concluding exclamation of
Thomas, "My Lord and my God."

In the following analysis the sections peculiar to
John are marked by a star.

*I. The Prologue. The theme
of the Gospel: the Logos, the eternal Revealer of God:

*(3.) The first sign: the changing of water into
wine at Cana in Galilee, 2:1–11. First sojourn in Capernaum, 2:12. First Passover and journey to
Jerusalem during the public ministry, 2:13.

*(4.) The reformatory cleansing of the Temple,
2:14–22. (Recorded also by the Synoptists,
but at the close of the public ministry.) Labors among the Jews in
Jerusalem, 2:23–25.

*(5.) Conversation with Nicodemus, representing the
timid disciples, the higher classes among the Jews. Regeneration the
condition of entering into the kingdom of God, 3:1–15. The love of God in the sending of his
Son to save the world, 3:16–21. (Jerusalem.)

*(6.) Labors of Jesus in Judaea. The testimony of
John the Baptist: He must increase, but I must decrease, 3:22–36. (Departure of Jesus into Galilee
after John’s imprisonment, 4:1–3; comp. Matt. 4:12; Mark 1:14; Luke 4:14.)

*(7.) Labors in Samaria on the journey from Judaea
to Galilee. The woman of Samaria; Jacob’s well; the
water of life; the worship of God the Spirit in spirit and in truth;
the fields ripening for the harvest, John
4:1–42.
Jesus teaches publicly in Galilee, 4:43–45 (comp. Matt. 4:17; Mark 1:14, 15 Luke 4:14, 15).

*(8.) Jesus again visits Cana in Galilee and heals
a nobleman’s son at Capernaum, John 4:46–54.

*(9.) Second journey to Jerusalem at a feast (the
second Passover?). The healing of the infirm man at the pool of
Bethesda on the Sabbath, 5:1–18. Beginning of the hostility of the Jews.
Discourse of Christ on his relation to the Father, and his authority to
judge the world, 5:19–47.

(10.) The feeding of the five thousand, 6:1–14. The stilling of the tempest, 6:15–21.

*The mysterious discourse in Capernaum on the bread
of life; the sifting of the disciples; the confession of Peter: "To
whom shall we go," etc.; the hinting at the treason of Judas, 6:22–71.

*(11.) Third visit to Jerusalem, at the feast of
the Tabernacles. The hasty request of the brethren of Jesus who did not
believe on him. His discourse in the Temple with opposite effect.
Rising hostility of the Jews, and vain efforts of the hierarchy to
seize him as a false teacher misleading the people, 7:1–52.

[*(12a.) The woman taken in adultery and pardoned
by Jesus, 7:53–8:11. Jerusalem. Probably an
interpolation from oral tradition, authentic and true, but not from the
pen of John. Also found at the end, and at Luke 21.]

*(12b.) Discourse on the light of the world. The
children of God and the children of the devil. Attempts to stone Jesus,
John 8:12–59.

*(13.) The healing of the man born blind, on a
Sabbath, and his testimony before the Pharisees, 9:1–41.

*(14.) The parable of the good shepherd, 10:1–21. Speech at the feast of Dedication
in Solomon’s porch, 10:22–39. Departure to the country beyond
the Jordan, 10:40–42.

*(15.) The resurrection of Lazarus at Bethany, and
its effect upon hastening the crisis. The counsel of Caiaphas. Jesus
retires from Jerusalem to Ephraim, 11:1–57.

(16.) The anointing by Mary in Bethany, 12:1–8. The counsel of the chief priests, 12:9–11.

*(18.) Visit of the Greeks. Discourse of Jesus on
the grain of wheat which must die to bear fruit; the voice from heaven;
the attraction of the cross; the opposite effect; reflection of the
Evangelist; summary of the speeches of Jesus, John
12:20–50.

III. The Private Manifestation of
Christ in the Circle of his Disciples. During the fourth and
last Passover week. Jerusalem, 13:1–17:26.

*(l.) Jesus washes the feet of the disciples before
the Passover meal, 13:1–20.

(4.) The attestation of the authorship of the
Gospel by the pupils of John, 21:24, 25.

Characteristics of the Fourth Gospel.

The Gospel of John is the most original, the most
important, the most influential book in all literature. The great
Origen called it the crown of the Gospels, as the Gospels are the crown
of all sacred writings.10491049Opera, IV. 6:
τολμητέον
τοίνυν
εἰπεῖν
ἀπαρχὴν
μὲν πασῶν
γραφῶν
εἷναι τὰ
εὐαγγέλια,
τῶν δε
εὐαγγελίων
ἀπαρχὴν
τὸ κατὰ
Ἰωάννην. It is pre-eminently the spiritual and ideal,
though at the same time a most real Gospel, the truest transcript of
the original. It lifts the veil from the holy of holies and reveals the
glory of the Only Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. It
unites in harmony the deepest knowledge and the purest love of Christ.
We hear as it were his beating heart; we lay our hands in his
wound-prints and exclaim with doubting Thomas: "My Lord and my God." No
book is so plain and yet so deep, so natural and yet so full of
mystery. It is simple as a child and sublime as a seraph, gentle as a
lamb and bold as an eagle, deep as the sea and high as the heavens.

It has been praised as "the unique, tender,
genuine Gospel," "written by the hand of an angel," as "the heart of
Christ," as "God’s love-letter to the world," or
"Christ’s love-letter to the church." It has exerted
an irresistible charm on many of the strongest and noblest minds in
Christendom, as Origen in Egypt, Chrysostom in Asia, Augustin in
Africa, the German Luther, the French Calvin, the poetic Herder, the
critical Schleiermacher, and a multitude of less famous writers of all
schools and shades of thought. Even many of those who doubt or deny the
apostolic authorship cannot help admiring its more than earthly
beauties.10501050 DeWette says that the
discourses of Christ in John shine with more than earthly brilliancy
(sie strahlen in mehr als
irdischem Brillantfeuer, Exeg. Handbuch, I.3, p. 7). Holtzmann: "The fundamental ideas of the fourth
Gospel lie far beyond the horizon of the church in the second century,
and indeed of the whole Christian church down to the present day" (in
Schenkel’s "Bibel. Lexik.," II. 234). Baur and Keim
(I. 133) give the Gospel the highest praise asa philosophy of religion,
but deny its historical value.

Let us point out the chief characteristics of this
book which distinguish it from the Synoptical Gospels.

1. The fourth Gospel is the Gospel of the Incarnation, that is, of the perfect union of the
divine and human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who for this very
reason is the Saviour of the world and the fountain of eternal life.
"The Word became flesh." This is the theoretical theme. The writer
begins with the eternal pre-existence of the Logos, and ends with the
adoration of his incarnate divinity in the exclamation of the sceptical
Thomas: "My Lord and my God!" Luke’s preface is
historiographic and simply points to his sources of information;
John’s prologue is metaphysical and dogmatic, and
sounds the keynote of the subsequent history. The Synoptists begin with
the man Jesus and rise up to the recognition of his Messiahship and
divine Sonship; John descends from the pre-existent Son of God through
the preparatory revelations to his incarnation and crucifixion till he
resumes the glory which he had before the world began. The former give
us the history of a divine man, the latter the history of a human God.
Not that he identifies him with the Godhead (ὁ
θεός); on the contrary, he clearly
distinguishes the Son and the Father and makes him inferior in dignity
("the Father is greater than I"); but he declares that the Son is "God"
(θεός), that is, of divine essence or
nature.

And yet there is no contradiction here between the
Evangelists except for those who deem a union of the Divine and human
in one person an impossibility. The Christian Church has always felt
that the Synoptic and the Johannean Christ are one and the same, only
represented from different points of view. And in this judgment the
greatest scholars and keenest critics, from Origen down to the present
time, have concurred.

For, on the one hand, John’s
Christ is just as real and truly human as that of the Synoptists. He
calls himself the Son of man and "a man" (John 8:40); he "groaned in the spirit"
(11:33), he
"wept" at the grave of a friend (11:35), and his "soul" was "troubled" in the
prospect of the dark hour of crucifixion (12:27) and the crime of the traitor (13:1). The Evangelist attests with
solemn emphasis from what he saw with his own eyes that Jesus truly
suffered and died (19:33–35).10521052 Notwithstanding such passages
Dr. Davidson asserts (II. 278): "In uniting the only-begotten Son of
God with the historical Jesus, the evangelist implies the absence of
full humanity. The personality consists essentially of the Logos, the
flesh being only a temporary thing. Body, soul, and spirit do not
belong to Jesus Christ; he is the Logos incarnate for a time, who soon
returns to the original state of oneness with the Father."

The Synoptic Christ, on the other hand, is as
truly elevated above ordinary mortals as the Johannean. It is true, he
does not in so many words declare his pre-existence as in John 1:1; 6:62; 8:58; 17:5, 24, but it is implied, or follows as a
legitimate consequence. He is conceived without sin, a descendant of
David, and yet the Lord of David (Matt. 22:41); he claims authority to forgive sins,
for which he is accused of blasphemy by the Jews (quite consistently
from their standpoint of unbelief); he gives his life a ransom for the
redemption of the world; he will come in his glory and judge all
nations; yea, in the very Sermon on the Mount, which all schools of
Rationalists accept his genuine teaching, He declares himself to be the
judge of the world (Matt. 7:21–23; comp. 25:31–46), and in the baptismal formula He
associates himself and the Holy Spirit with the eternal Father, as the
connecting link between the two, thus assuming a place on the very
throne of the Deity (28:19). It
is impossible to rise higher. Hence Matthew, the Jewish Evangelist,
does not hesitate to apply to Him the name Immanuel, that is, "God with
us"(1:23). Mark
gives us the Gospel of Peter, the first who confessed that Jesus is not
only "the Christ" in his official character, but also "the Son of the
living God." This is far more than a son; it designates his unique
personal relation to God and forms the eternal basis of his historical
Messiahship (Matt. 16:16;
comp. 26:63). The
two titles are distinct, and the high priest’s charge
of blasphemy (26:65) could
only apply to the latter. A false Messiah would be an impostor, not a
blasphemer. We could not substitute the Messiah for the Son in the
baptismal formula. Peter, Mark, and Matthew were brought up in the most
orthodox monotheism, with an instinctive horror of the least approach
to idolatry, and yet they looked up to their Master with feelings of
adoration. And, as for Luke, he delights in representing Jesus
throughout as the sinless Saviour of sinners, and is in full sympathy
with the theology of his elder brother Paul, who certainly taught the
pre-existence and divine nature of Christ several years before the
Gospels were written or published (Rom. 1:3, 4; 9:5; 2 Cor. 8:9; Col.
1:15–17;
Phil. 2:6–11).

2. It is the Gospel of Love. Its practical motto is: "God is love." In the
incarnation of the eternal Word, in the historic mission of his Son,
God has given the greatest possible proof of his love to mankind. In
the fourth Gospel alone we read that precious sentence which contains
the very essence of Christianity: "God so loved the world, that he gave
his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not
perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:16). It is the Gospel of the Good Shepherd
who laid down his life for the sheep (10:11); the Gospel of the new commandment:
"Love one another" (13:34). And
this was the last exhortation of the aged disciple "whom Jesus
loved."

But for this very reason that Christ is the
greatest gift of God to the world, unbelief is the greatest sin and
blackest ingratitude, which carries in it its own condemnation. The
guilt of unbelief, the contrast between faith and unbelief is nowhere
set forth in such strong light as in the fourth Gospel. It is a
consuming fire to all enemies of Christ.

3. It is the Gospel of Mystic
Symbolism.10531053 Lange, Westcott, Milligan and
Moulton dwell at length on this feature. The eight miracles it records are significant
"signs" (σημεῖα) which symbolize the character and
mission of Christ, and manifest his glory. They are simply his "works"
(ἔργα), the natural manifestations of his
marvellous person performed with the same ease as men perform their
ordinary works. The turning of water into wine illustrates his
transforming power, and fitly introduces his public ministry; the
miraculous feeding of the five thousand set him forth as the Bread of
life for the spiritual nourishment of countless believers; the healing
of the man born blind, as the Light of the world; the raising of
Lazarus, as the Resurrection and the Life. The miraculous draught of
fishes shows the disciples to be fishers of men, and insures the
abundant results of Christian labor to the end of time. The serpent in
the wilderness prefigured the cross. The Baptist points to him as the
Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. He represents
himself under the significant figures of the Door, the good Shepherd,
the Vine; and these figures have inspired Christian art and poetry, and
guided the meditations of the church ever since.

The whole Old Testament is a type and prophecy of
the New. "The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ" (1:17). Herein
lies the vast superiority of Christianity, and yet the great importance
of Judaism as an essential part in the scheme of redemption. Clearly
and strongly as John brings out the opposition to the unbelieving Jews,
he is yet far from going to the Gnostic extreme of rejecting or
depreciating the Old Testament; on the contrary "salvation comes from
the Jews" (says Christ to the Samaritan woman, 4:22); and turning the Scripture argument
against the scribes and Pharisees who searched the letter of the
Scriptures, but ignored the spirit, Christ confronts them with the
authority of Moses on whom they fixed their hope. "If ye believed
Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me. But ye believe not his
writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (5:46). John sees Christ everywhere in those
ancient Scriptures which cannot be broken. He unfolds the true
Messianic idea in conflict with the carnal perversion of it among the
Jews under the guidance of the hierarchy.

The Johannean and Synoptic Discourses of
Christ.

4. John gives prominence to the transcendent Discourses about the person of Christ and his
relation to the Father, to the world, and the disciples. His words are
testimonies, revealing the inner glory of his person; they are Spirit
and they are life.

Matthew’s Gospel is likewise
didactic; but there is a marked difference between the contents and
style of the Synoptic and the Johannean discourses of Jesus. The former
discuss the nature of the Messianic kingdom, the fulfilment of the law,
the duty of holy obedience, and are popular, practical, brief, pointed,
sententious, parabolic, and proverbial; the latter touch the deepest
mysteries of theology and Christology, are metaphysical, lengthy,
liable to carnal misunderstanding, and scarcely discernible from
John’s own style in the prologue and the first
Epistle, and from that used by the Baptist. The transition is almost
imperceptible in John 3:16 and 3:31.

Here we reach the chief difficulty in the
Johannean problem. Here is the strong point of sceptical criticism. We
must freely admit at the outset that John so reproduced the words of
his Master as to mould them unconsciously into his own type of thought
and expression. He revolved them again and again in his heart, they
were his daily food, and the burden of his teaching to the churches
from Sunday to Sunday; yet he had to translate, to condense, to expand,
and to apply them; and in this process it was unavoidable that his own
reflections should more or less mingle with his recollections. With all
the tenacity of his memory it was impossible that at such a great
interval of time (fifty or sixty years after the events) he should be
able to record literally every discourse just as it was spoken; and he
makes no such claim, but intimates that he selects and summarizes.

This is the natural view of the case, and the same
concession is now made by all the champions of the Johannean authorship
who do not hold to a magical inspiration theory and turn the sacred
writers into unthinking machines, contrary to their own express
statements, as in the Preface of Luke. But we deny that this concession
involves any sacrifice of the truth of history or of any lineament from
the physiognomy of Christ. The difficulty here presented is usually
overstated by the critics, and becomes less and less, the higher we
rise in our estimation of Christ, and the closer we examine the
differences in their proper connection. The following reflections will
aid the student:

(1) In the first place we must remember the
marvellous heighth and depth and breadth of Christ’s
intellect as it appears in the Synoptists as well as in John. He
commanded the whole domain of religious and moral truth; he spake as
never man spake, and the people were astonished at his teaching (Matt.
7:28, 29; Mark 1:22;
6:2; Luke 4:32; John 7:46). He addressed not only his own
generation, but through it all ages and classes of men. No wonder that
his hearers often misunderstood him. The Synoptists give examples of
such misunderstanding as well as John (comp. Mark 8:16). But who will set limits to his
power and paedagogic wisdom in the matter and form of his teaching?
Must he not necessarily have varied his style when he addressed the
common people in Galilee, as in the Synoptists, and the educated,
proud, hierarchy of Jerusalem, as in John? Or when he spoke on the
mountain, inviting the multitude to the Messianic Kingdom at the
opening of his ministry, and when he took farewell from his disciples
in the chamber, in view of the great sacrifice? Socrates appears very
different in Xenophon and in Plato, yet we can see him in both. But
here is a far greater than Socrates.10541054 Hase (Geschichte Jesu, p. 61)
makes some striking remarks on this parallel: "Der Sokrates des Xenophon ist ein anderer als der des
Plato, jeder hat diejenige Seite aufgefasst, die ihm die
nächst und liebste war; erst aus beider. Darstellungen
erkennen wir den rechten Sokrates. Xenophons anschauliche Einfachheit
trägt das volle Gepräge der Wahrheit dessen, was
er erzählt. Dennoch dieser Sokrates, der sich im engen
Kreise sittlicher und politischer Vorstellungen herumdreht, ist nicht
der ganze Sokrates, der weiseste in Griechenland, der die grosse
Revolution in den Geistem seines Volks hervorgerufen hat. Dagegen der
platonische Sokrates sich weit mehr zum Schöpfer der neuen
Periods griechischer Philosophie eignet und darnach
aussieht, als habe er die Weisheit vom Himmel zur Erde gebracht, der
attische Logos."

(2) John’s mind, at a period when
it was most pliable and plastic, had been so conformed to the mind of
Christ that his own thoughts and words faithfully reflected the
teaching of his Master. If there ever was spiritual sympathy and
congeniality between two minds, it was between Jesus and the disciple
whom he loved and whom he intrusted with the care of his mother. John
stood nearer to his Lord than any Christian or any of the Synoptists.
"Why should not John have been formed upon the model of Jesus rather
than the Jesus of his Gospel be the reflected image of himself? Surely
it may be left to all candid minds to say whether, to adopt only the
lowest supposition, the creative intellect of Jesus was not far more
likely to mould His disciple to a conformity with itself, than the
receptive spirit of the disciple to give birth by its own efforts to
that conception of a Redeemer which so infinitely surpasses the
loftiest image of man’s own creation."10551055 Milligan and Moulton, in their
excellent Commentary on John, Introd., p. xxxiii.

(3) John reproduced the discourses from the
fulness of the spirit of Christ that dwelt in him, and therefore
without any departure from the ideas. The whole gospel history assumes
that Christ did not finish, but only began his work while on earth,
that he carries it on in heaven through his chosen organs, to whom he
promised mouth and wisdom (Luke 21:15; Matt. 10:19) and his constant presence (Matt.
19:20; 28:20). The disciples
became more and more convinced of the superhuman character of Christ by
the irresistible logic of fact and thought. His earthly life appeared
to them as a transient state of humiliation which was preceded by a
pre-existent state of glory with the Father, as it was followed by a
permanent state of glory after the resurrection and ascension to
heaven. He withheld from them "many things" because they could not bear
them before his glorification (John 16:12). "What I do," he said to Peter, "thou
knowest not now, but thou shalt come to know hereafter" (13:7). Some of his deepest sayings, which
they had at first misunderstood, were illuminated by the resurrection
(2:22; 12:16), and then by the outpouring of the
Spirit, who took things out of the fulness of Christ and declared them
to the disciples (16:13, 14).
Hence the farewell discourses are so full of the Promises of the Spirit
of truth who would glorify Christ in their hearts. Under such guidance
we may be perfectly sure of the substantial faithfulness of
John’s record.

(4) Beneath the surface of the similarity there is
a considerable difference between the language of Christ and the
language of his disciple. John never attributes to Christ the
designation Logos, which he uses so prominently in the Prologue and the
first Epistle. This is very significant, and shows his conscientious
care. He distinguished his own theology from the teaching of his
Master, no matter whether he borrowed the term Logos from Philo (which
cannot be proven), or coined it himself from his reflections on Old
Testament distinctions between the hidden and the revealed God and
Christ’s own testimonies concerning his relation to
the Father. The first Epistle of John is an echo of his Gospel, but
with original matter of his own and Polemical references to the
anti-Christian errors of big day. "The phrases of the Gospel," says
Westcott, "have a definite historic connection: they belong to
circumstances which explain them. The phrases in the Epistle are in
part generalizations, and in part interpretations of the earlier
language in view of Christ’s completed work and of the
experience of the Christian church."

As to the speeches of the Baptist, in the fourth
Gospel, they keep, as the same writer remarks, strictly within the
limits suggested by the Old Testament. "What he says spontaneously of
Christ is summed up in the two figures of the
’Lamb’ and the
’Bridegroom,’ which together give a
comprehensive view of the suffering and joy, the redemptive and the
completive work of Messiah under prophetic imagery. Both figures appear
again in the Apocalypse; but it is very significant that they do not
occur in the Lord’s teaching in the fourth Gospel or
in St. John’s Epistles."

(5) There are not wanting striking resemblances in
thought and style between the discourses in John and in the Synoptists,
especially Matthew, which are sufficient to refute the assertion that
the two types of teaching are irreconcilable.10561056 "Si Jésus," says
Renan, "parlait comme le veut
Matthieu, il n’a pu parler comme le veut
Jean." The Synoptists were not
quite unfamiliar with the other type of teaching. They occasionally
rise to the spiritual height of John and record briefer sayings of
Jesus which could be inserted without a discord in his Gospel. Take the
prayer of thanksgiving and the touching invitation to all that labor
and are heavy laden, in Matt.
11:25–30.
The sublime declaration recorded by Luke 10:22 and Matthew 11:27: "No one knoweth the Son, save the
Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to
whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him," is thoroughly Christ-like
according to John’s conception, and is the basis of
his own declaration in the prologue: "No man hath seen God at any time;
the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him"(John 1:18).
Jesus makes no higher claim in John than he does in Matthew when he
proclaims: "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on
earth" (Matt. 28:18). In almost the same words Jesus says in
John 17:2: "Thou
hast given him power over all flesh."

On the other hand, John gives us not a few
specimens of those short, pithy maxims of oriental wisdom which
characterize the Synoptic discourses.10571057John 1:26, 43; 2:19; 4:44;
6:20, 35, 37; 12:13, 25, 27; 18:16, 20:20:19, 23. See the lists in
Godet, I. 197sq., and Westcott, p. lxxxii sq. The following are the
principal parallel passages:

John 2:19: Jesus answered and said
unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it
up.Matt. 26:61: This man said, I am
able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days. Cf.
Mark 14:58; 15:29.

3:18: He that believeth on him is
not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already.Mark 16:16: He that believeth and
is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be
condemned.

4:44: For Jesus himself testified
that a prophet hath no honor in his own country.Matt. 15:57: But Jesus said unto
them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in
his own house. Cf. Mark 6:4; Luke 4:24

6:35: He that cometh to me shall
not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.Matt. 5:6; Luke 6:21: Blessed are
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be
filled.

6:37: All that which the Father
giveth me shall come unto me; and him that cometh unto me I will in no
wise cast out.Matt. 11:28, 29: Come unto me, an
ye that labor and are heavy laden, ... and ye shall find rest unto your
souls.

6:46: Not that any man hath seen
the Father, save he which is from God, he hath seen the Father. Cf.
1:18: No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is
in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.Matt. 11:27: And no one knoweth the
Son, save the Father, neither doth any know the Father, save the Son,
and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.

12:8: For the poor ye have always
with you; but me ye have not always.Matt. 26:11: For ye have the poor
always with you; but me ye have not always. Cf. Mark 14:7.

12:25: He that loveth his life
loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto
life eternal.Matt. 10: 39: He that findeth his
life shall lose it; and he thatloseth his life for my sake shall find
it. Cf. 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; 17:83.

12:27: Now is my soul troubled; and
what shall say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came
I unto this hour.Matt. 26:38: Then saith he unto
them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Cf. Mark
14:84.

13:3: Jesus knowing that the Father
had given all things into his hands ....Matt. 11:27: All things have been
delivered unto me of my Father.

13:16: Verily, verily I say unto
you, A servant is not greater than his lord.Matt. 10:24: A disciple is not
above his master, nor a servant above his lord. Cf. Luke
6:40.

13:20: He that receiveth whomsoever
I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent
me.Matt. 10:40: He that receiveth you
receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent
me.

14:18: I will not leave you
desolate; I come unto you. Cf. 14:23: We will ... make our abode with
him.Matt. 28:20: I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world.

15:21: But all these things will
they do unto you for my name’s sake.Matt. 10:22: And ye shall be hated
of all men for my name’s make.

17:2: Even as thou gavest him
authority over all flesh.Matt. 28:18: All authority hath
been given unto me in heaven and on earth.

The style of the fourth Gospel differs widely from
the ecclesiastical writers of the second century, and belongs to the
apostolic age. It has none of the technical theological terms of
post-apostolic controversies, no allusions to the state of the church,
its government and worship, but moves in the atmosphere of the first
Christian generation; yet differs widely from the style of the
Synoptists and is altogether unique in the history of secular and
religious literature, a fit expression of the genius of John: clear and
deep, simple as a child, and mature as a saint, sad and yet serene, and
basking in the sunshine of eternal life and love. The fourth Gospel is
pure Greek in vocabulary and grammar, but thoroughly Hebrew in temper
and spirit, even more so than any other book, and can be almost
literally translated into Hebrew without losing its force or beauty. It
has the childlike simplicity, the artlessness, the imaginativeness, the
directness, the circumstantiality, and the rhythmical parallelism which
characterize the writings of the Old Testament. The sentences are short
and weighty, coordinated, not subordinated. The construction is
exceedingly simple: no involved periods, no connecting links, no
logical argumentation, but a succession of self-evident truths declared
as from immediate intuition. The parallelism of Hebrew poetry is very
apparent in such double sentences as: "Peace I leave with you; my peace
I give unto you;" "A servant is not greater than his lord; neither one
that is sent greater than he that sent him;" "All things were made by
him, and without him was not anything made that hath been made."
Examples of antithetic parallelism are also frequent: "The light
shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not;" "He was
in the world, and the world knew him not;" "He confessed, and denied
not;" "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish."

The author has a limited vocabulary, but loves
emphatic repetition, and his very monotony is solemn and impressive. He
uses certain key-words of the profoundest import, as Word, life, light,
truth, love, glory, testimony, name, sign, work, to know, to behold, to
believe. These are not abstract conceptions but concrete realities. He
views the world under comprehensive contrasts, as life and death, light
and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hatred, God and the devil,
and (in the first Epistle) Christ and Antichrist.

He avoids the optative, and all argumentative
particles, but uses very frequently the simple particles καί, δέ,
οὗν,
ἵνα. His most characteristic particle
in the narrative portions is "therefore" (οὗν],
ωηιχη ις ωιτη
ηιμ νοτ
σψλλογιστιχ
[λικε ἄραand its compounds), but indicative
simply of continuation and retrospect (like "so" and "then" or the
German "nun"), yet with the idea that
nothing happens without a cause; while the particle "in order that"
(ἵνα) indicates that nothing happens without a
purpose. He avoids the relative pronoun and prefers the connecting
"and" with the repetition of the noun, as "In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God .... In
him was life, and the life was the light of men." The "and" sometimes
takes the place of "but," as "The light shineth in the darkness,
and the darkness comprehended it not" (John 1:5).

We look in vain for such important words as
church, gospel, repentance (μετάνοια), but the substance is there in
different forms. He does not even use the noun "faith" (πίστις), which frequently occurs in the
Synoptists and in Paul, but he uses the verb "to believe" (πιστεύειν) ninety-eight times, about twice
as often as all three Synoptists together.

He applies the significant term Logos
(ratio and oratio) to Christ as the Revealer and the
Interpreter of God (1:18), but only in the Prologue, and such
figurative designations as "the Light of the world," "the Bread of
life," "the Good Shepherd," "the Vine," "the Way," "the Truth," and
"the Life." He alone uses the double "Verily" in the discourses of the
Saviour. He calls the Holy Spirit the "Paraclete" or "Advocate" of
believers, who pleads their cause here on earth, as Christ pleads it on
the throne in heaven. There breathes through this book an air of
calmness and serenity, of peace and repose, that seems to come from the
eternal mansions of heaven.10581058 For further particulars of
John’s style see my Companion tothe Study of the
Greek Test., pp. 66-75, where the opinions of Renan, Ewald,
Luthardt, Keim, Godet, Westcott, Hase, and Weiss are given on the
subject.

Is such a style compatible with the hypothesis of
a post- and pseudo-apostolic fiction? We have a large number of
fictitious Gospels, but they differ as much from the fourth canonical
Gospel as midnight darkness from noonday brightness.

Authorship.

For nearly eighteen centuries the Christian church
of all denominations has enjoyed the fourth Gospel without a shadow of
doubt that it was the work of John the Apostle. But in the nineteenth
century the citadel was assailed with increasing force, and the
conflict between the besiegers and defenders is still raging among
scholars of the highest ability. It is a question of life and death
between constructive and destructive criticism. The vindication of the
fourth Gospel as a genuine product of John, the beloved disciple, is
the death-blow of the mythical and legendary reconstruction and
destruction of the life of Christ and the apostolic history. The
ultimate result cannot be doubtful. The opponents have been forced
gradually to retreat from the year 170 to the very beginning of the
second century, as the time when the fourth Gospel was already known
and used in the church, that is to the lifetime of many pupils and
friends of John and other eye-witnesses of the life of Christ.10591059 See the literary notices on p.
405 sqq. To the able vindications of the genuineness of John there
mentioned must now be added the masterly discussion of Dr. Weiss in his
Leben Jesu (vol. I., 1882, pp. 84-124), which has just come to
hand.

I. The External Proof of
the Johannean authorship is as strong, yea stronger than that of the
genuineness of any classical writer of antiquity, and goes up to the
very beginning of the second century, within hailing distance of the
living John. It includes catholic writers, heretics, and heathen
enemies. There is but one dissenting voice, hardly audible, that of the
insignificant sect of the Alogi who opposed the Johannean doctrine of
the Logos (hence their name, with the double meaning of unreasonable,
and anti-Logos heretics) and absurdly ascribed both the Gospel of John
and the Apocalypse to his enemy, the Gnostic Cerinthus.10601060 Recently renewed in part by
Renan (1879). See below. Let us
briefly sum up the chief testimonies.

1. Catholic testimonies. We begin at the
fourth century and gradually rise up to the age of John. All the
ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, including the Sinaitic
and the Vatican, which date from the age of Constantine and are based
upon older copies of the second century, and all the ancient versions,
including the Syriac and old Latin from the third and second centuries,
contain without exception the Gospel of John, though the Peshito omits
his second and third Epistles and the Apocalypse. These manuscripts and
versions represent the universal voice of the churches.

Then we have the admitted individual testimonies
of all the Greek and Latin fathers up to the middle of the second
century, without a dissenting voice or doubt: Jerome (d. 419) and
Eusebius (d. 340), who had the whole ante-Nicene literature before
them; Origen in Egypt (d. 254), the greatest scholar of his age and a
commentator on John; Tertullian of North Africa (about 200), a Catholic
in doctrine, a Montanist in discipline, and a zealous advocate of the
dispensation of the Paraclete announced by John; Clement of Alexandria
(about 190), a cultivated philosopher who had travelled in Greece,
Italy, Syria, and Palestine, seeking religious instruction everywhere;
Irenaeus, a native of Asia Minor and from 178 bishop of Lyons, a pupil
of Polycarp and a grand-pupil of John himself, who derived his chief
ammunition against the Gnostic heresy from the fourth Gospel, and
represents the four canonical Gospels—no more and no
less—as universally accepted by the churches of his
time; Theophilus of Antioch (180), who expressly quotes from the fourth
Gospel under the name of John;10611061 His quotation is considered
the earliest by name; but Irenaeus, who wrote between 177 and 192,
represents an older tradition, and proves to his satisfaction that
there must be just four Gospels to answer the four cherubim in
Ezekiel’s vision. Adv. Haer., III. 1, 1;
11, 8; V. 36, 2. the Muratorian Canon (170), which
reports the occasion of the composition of John’s
Gospel by urgent request of his friends and disciples; Tatian of Syria
(155–170), who in his "Address to the Greeks"
repeatedly quotes the fourth Gospel, though without naming the author,
and who began his, "Diatessaron"—once widely spread in
the church notwithstanding the somewhat Gnostic leanings of the author,
and commented on by Ephraem of Syria—with the prologue
of John.10621062 The Commentary of Ephraem
Syrus on the Diatessaron (375) has recently been discovered and
published from an Armenian translation, at Venice, in 1876. Comp. Zahn,
Tatian’s Diatessaron, Erlangen, 1881, and
Harnack, Die Ueberlieferung der griechisch en Apologeten des zweiten
Jahrh., Leipzig, 1882, pp. 213 sqq. From him we have but one step to his teacher,
Justin Martyr, a native of Palestine (103–166), and a
bold and noble-minded defender of the faith in the reigns of Hadrian
and the Antonines. In his two Apologies and his Dialogue with Trypho
the Jew, he often quotes freely from the four Gospels under the name of
Apostolic "Memoirs" or "Memorabilia of the Apostles," which were read
at his time in public, worship.10631063 The use of the Gospel of John
by Justin Martyr was doubted by Baur and most of his followers, but is
admitted by Hilgenfeld and Keim. It was again denied by the anonymous
author of "Supernatural Religion," and by Edwin A. Abbott (in the art.
Gospels, "Enc. Brit.," vol. X 821), and again conclusively
proven by Sanday in England, and Ezra Abbot in America. He made most use of Matthew, but once at
least he quotes a passage on regeneration10641064 The quotation is not literal
but from memory, like most of his quotations: Justin, Apol., I. 61: "For
Christ also said, Except ye beborn again [ἀναγεννηθῆτε, comp. 1 Pet. 3:23], ye shall in no wise enter
[εἰσέλθῆτε, but comp. the same word In John 8:5 and 7] into the
kingdom of heaven (the phrase of Matthew]. Now that it is
impossible for those who have once been born to re-enter the wombs of
those that bare them is manifest to all."John 3:3, 4: "Jesus answered
and said to him [Nicodemus], Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
man be born anew [or from above, γεννηθῇ
ἄνωθεν], he cannot see [ἰδεῖν 3: 5, enter into] the kingdom of God. Nicodemus
saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a
second time into his mother’s womb and be
born?" Much account has been made by the
Tübingen critics of the slight differences in the
quotation (ἀναγεννηθῆτε
for γεννηθῇ
ἄνωθεν,
εἰσελθεῖν
for ἰδεῖν
and βασιλεία
τῶν
οὐρανῶν for βας. τοῦ
θεοῦ) to disprove
the connection, or, as this is impossible, to prove the dependence of
John on Justin! But Dr. Abbot, a most accurate and conscientious
scholar, who moreover as a Unitarian cannot be charged with an orthodox
bias, has produced many parallel cases of free quotations of the same
passage not only from patristic writers, but even from modem divines,
including no less than nine quotations of the passage by Jeremy Taylor,
only two of which are alike. I think he has conclusively proven his
case for every reasonable mind. See his invaluable monograph on The
Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, pp. 28 sqq. and 91 sqq. Comp. also
Weiss, Leben Jesu, I. 83, who sees in Justin Martyr not only "an
unquestionable allusion to the Nicodemus story of the fourth Gospel,"
but other isolated reminiscences

from
Christ’s dialogue with Nicodemus which is recorded
only by John. Several other allusions of Justin to John are
unmistakable, and his whole doctrine of the pre-existent Logos who
sowed precious seeds of truth among Jews and Gentiles before his
incarnation, is unquestionably derived from John. To reverse the case
is to derive the sunlight from the moon, or the fountain from one of
its streams.

But we can go still farther back. The scanty
writings of the Apostolic Fathers, so called, have very few allusions
to the New Testament, and breathe the atmosphere of the primitive oral
tradition. The author of the "Didache" was well acquainted with
Matthew. The first Epistle of Clement has strong affinity with Paul.
The shorter Epistles of Ignatius show the influence of
John’s Christology.10651065 Comp. such expressions as "I
desire bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ ... and I
desire as drink His blood, which is love imperishable," Ad Rom.,
ch. 7, with John 6:47 sqq.; "living water," Ad Rom. 7, with John
4:10, 11; "being Himself the Door of the Father," Ad Philad., 9,
with John 10:9; [the Spirit] "knows whence it cometh and whither it
goeth," Ad Philad., 7, with John 3:8. I quoted from the text of
Zahn. See the able art. of Lightfoot in "Contemp. Rev." for February,
1875, and his S. Ignatius, 1885. Polycarp (d. a.d. 155 in extreme old age), a personal pupil of
John, used the First Epistle of John, and thus furnishes an indirect
testimony to the Gospel, since both these ’books must
stand or fall together.10661066 Polyc., Ad Phil., ch.
7: "Every one that doth not confess that Jesus Christ hath come in the
flesh is Antichrist; and whosoever doth not confess the mystery of the
cross is of the devil." Comp. 1 John 4:3. On the testimony of Polycarp
see Lightfoot in the "Contemp. Rev." for May, 1875. Westcott, p. xxx,
says: "A testimony to one" (the Gospel or the first Ep.) "is
necessarily by inference a testimony to the other." The same is true of Papias (died about 150),
who studied with Polycarp, and probably was likewise a bearer of John.
He "used testimonies from the former Epistle of John."10671067 According to Eusebius, III.
39. See Lightfoot in the "Contemp. Rev." for August and October,
1875. In
enumerating the apostles whose living words he collected in his youth,
he places John out of his regular order of precedence, along with
Matthew, his fellow-Evangelist, and "Andrew, Peter, and Philip" in the
same order as John 1:40–43; from which it has also been
inferred that he knew the fourth Gospel. There is some reason to
suppose that the disputed section on the woman taken in adultery was
recorded by him in illustration of John 8:15; for, according to Eusebius, he
mentioned a similar story in his lost work.10681068 Eusebius, H. E., III.
39, closes his account of Papias with the notice: "He has likewise set
forth another narrative [in his Exposition of the
Lord’s Oracles] concerning a woman who was
maliciously accused before the Lord touching many sins, which is
contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews." These facts combined,
make it at least extremely probable that Papias was familiar with
John.10691069 In a tradition too late (ninth
century) to be of any critical weight, Papias is even made the
amanuensis of John in the preparation of his Gospel. A Vatican Codex
(of Queen Christina of Sweden) has this marginal gloss: "Evangelium
Johannis manifestatum et datum est ecclesiis ab Johanne adhuc in
corpore constituto; sicut Papiss, nomine Hieropolitanus discipulus
Johannis carus, in exotericis [exegeticis],id est in
extremis, quinque libris retulit [referring no doubt to the five
books of Λογίων
Κυριακῶν
ἐξηγήσεις] Descripsit vero evangelium dictante Johanne
recte." This was hailed as a direct
testimony of Papias for John by Prof. Aberle (Rom. Cath.) in the "
Tübing. Quartalschrift," 1864, No. 1, but set aside by
Hilgenfeld versus Aberle, in his " Zeitschrift," 1865, pp. 77
sqq., and Hase, l.c, p. 35. If Eusebius had found this notice in
the work of Papias, he would have probably mentioned it in connection
with his testimonies on the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. But see
Westcott, Canon, 5th ed., p. 77, note 1. The joint testimony of Polycarp and Papias
represents the school of John in the very field of his later labors,
and the succession was continued through Polycrates at Ephesus, through
Melito at Sardis, through Claudius Apollinaris at Hieropolis, and
Pothinus and Irenaeus in Southern Gaul. It is simply incredible that a
spurious Gospel should have been smuggled into the churches under the
name of their revered spiritual father and grandfather.

Finally, the concluding verse of the appendix,
John
21:24, is a still older
testimony of a number of personal friends and pupils of John, perhaps
the very persons who, according to ancient tradition, urged him to
write the Gospel. The book probably closed with the sentence: "This is
the disciple who beareth witness of these things, and wrote these
things." To this the elders add their attestation in the plural: "And
we know that his witness is true." A literary fiction would not
have been benefited by an anonymous postscript. The words as they,
stand are either a false testimony of the pseudo-John, or the true
testimony of the friends of the real John who first received his book
and published it before or after his death.

The voice of the whole Catholic church, so far as
it is heard, on the subject at all, is in favor of the authorship of
John. There is not a shadow of proof to the contrary opinion except
one, and that is purely negative and inconclusive. Baur to the very
last laid the greatest stress on the entangled paschal controversy of
the second century as a proof that John could not have written the
fourth Gospel because he was quoted as an authority for the celebration
of the Lord’s Supper on the 14th of Nisan; while the
fourth Gospel, in flat contradiction to the Synoptists, puts the
crucifixion on that day (instead of the 15th), and represents Christ as
the true paschal lamb slain at the very time when the typical Jewish
passover was slain. But, in the first place, some of the ablest
scholars know how to reconcile John with the Synoptic date of the
crucifixion on the 15th of Nisan; and, secondly, there is no evidence
at all that the apostle John celebrated Easter with the Quartodecimans
on the 14th of Nisan in commemoration of the day of the
Lord’s Supper. The controversy was between
conforming the celebration of the Christian Passover to the day of the
month, that is to Jewish chronology, or to the day of the week on
which Christ died. The former would have made Easter, more
conveniently, a fixed festival like the Jewish Passover, the latter or
Roman practice made it a movable feast, and this practice triumphed at
the Council of Nicaea.10701070 See
Schürer’s Latin dissertation De
controversiis paschalibus, etc., Leipz., 1869, and the German
translation in the "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." for 1970,
pp. 182-284.

2. Heretical testimonies. They all the more
important in view of their dissent from Catholic doctrine. It is
remarkable that the heretics seem to have used and commented on the
fourth Gospel even before the Catholic writers. The Clementine
Homilies, besides several allusions, very clearly quote from the story
of the man born blind, John 9:2, 3.10711071 In the last portion of the
book, discovered and first published by Dressel (XIX. 22). This
discovery has induced Hilgenfeld to retract his former denial of the
quotations in the earlier books, Einleit. in d. N. T., p,
43 sq., note. The Gnostics of the second century,
especially the Valentinians and Basilidians, made abundant use of the
fourth Gospel, which alternately offended them by its historical
realism, and attracted them by its idealism and mysticism. Heracleon, a
pupil of Valentinus, wrote a commentary on it, of which Origen has
preserved large extracts; Valentinus himself (according to Tertullian)
tried either to explain it away, or he put his own meaning into it.
Basilides, who flourished about a.d. 125,
quoted from the Gospel of John such passages as the "true light, which
enlighteneth every man was coming into the world" (John 1:9), and, my hour is not yet come "(2:4).10721072 See the Philosophumena
of Hippolytus, VII. 22, 27; Hofstede de Groot, Basilides, trans.
from the Dutch, Leipz, 1868; Hort, Basilides, in Smith and Wace,
I. 271; Abbot, l.c. 85 sqq.

These heretical testimonies are almost decisive by
themselves. The Gnostics would rather have rejected the fourth Gospel
altogether, as Marcion actually did, from doctrinal objection. They
certainly would not have received it from the Catholic church, as
little as the church would have received it from the Gnostics. The
concurrent reception of the Gospel by both at so early a date is
conclusive evidence of its genuineness. "The Gnostics of that date,"
says Dr. Abbot,10731073L. c., p.
89. "received it because they could not help it.
They would not have admitted the authority of a book which could be
reconciled with their doctrines only by the most forced interpretation,
if they could have destroyed its authority by denying its genuineness.
Its genuineness could then be easily ascertained. Ephesus was one of
the principal cities of the Eastern world, the centre of extensive
commerce, the metropolis of Asia Minor. Hundreds, if not thousands, of
people were living who had known the apostle John. The question whether
he, the beloved disciple, had committed to writing his recollections of
his Master’s life and teaching, was one of the
greatest interest. The fact of the reception of the fourth Gospel as
his work at so early a date, by parties so violently opposed to each
other, proves that the evidence of its genuineness was decisive. This
argument is further confirmed by the use of the Gospel by the opposing
parties in the later Montanistic controversy, and in the disputes about
the time of celebrating Easter."

3. Heathen testimony. Celsus, in his book
against Christianity, which was written about a.d. 178 (according to Keim, who reconstructed it from the
fragments preserved in the refutation of Origen), derives his matter
for attack from the four Gospels, though he does not name their
authors, and he refers to several details which are peculiar to John,
as, among others, the blood which flowed from the body of Jesus at his
crucifixion (John 19:34),
and the fact that Christ "after his death arose and showed the marks of
his punishment, and how his hands had been pierced" (20:25, 27).10741074 See Keim,
Celsus’ Wahres Wort, 1873, pp. 223-230, besides
the older investigations of Lardner, Norton, Tholuck, and the recent
one of Dr. Abbot, l.c., 58 sq.

The radical assertion of Baur that no distinct
trace of the fourth Gospel can be found before the last quarter of the
second century has utterly broken down, and his own best pupils have
been forced to make one concession after another as the successive
discoveries of the many Gnostic quotations in the Philosophumena, the
last book of the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, the Syrian Commentary on
Tatian’s Diatessaron, revealed the stubborn fact of
the use and abuse of the Gospel before the middle and up to the very
beginning of the second century, that is, to a time when it was simply
impossible to mistake a pseudo-apostolic fiction for a genuine
production of the patriarch of the apostolic age.

II. Internal Evidence.
This is even still stronger, and leaves at last no alternative but
truth or fraud.

1. To begin with the style of the fourth
Gospel, we have already seen that it is altogether unique and without a
parallel in post-apostolic literature, betraying a Hebrew of the
Hebrews, impregnated with the genius of the Old Testament, in mode of
thought and expression, in imagery and symbolism, in the symmetrical
structure of sentences, in the simplicity and circumstantiality of
narration; yet familiar with pure Greek, from long residence among
Greeks. This is just what we should expect from John at Ephesus. Though
not a rabbinical scholar, like Paul, he was acquainted with the Hebrew
Scriptures and not dependent on the Septuagint. He has in all fourteen
quotations from the Old Testament.10751075John 1:23; 2:17; 6:31, 45;
7:38; 10:34; 12:14, 38, 40; 13:18; 15:25; 19:21, 36, 37. Four of these agree
with the Hebrew and the Septuagint; three agree with the Hebrew
against the Septuagint (6:45; 13:18 19:37), the rest are neutral, either
agreeing with both or differing from both, or being free adaptations
rather than citations; but none of them agrees with the Septuagint
against the Hebrew.10761076 See the careful analysis of
the passages by Westcott, Intr., pp. xiii sqq.

Among the post-apostolic writers there is no
converted Jew, unless it be Hegesippus; none who could read the Hebrew
and write Hebraistic Greek. After the destruction of Jerusalem the
church finally separated from the synagogue and both assumed an
attitude of uncompromising hostility.

2. The author was a Jew of Palestine. He
gives, incidentally and without effort, unmistakable evidence of minute
familiarity with the Holy Land and its inhabitants before the
destruction of Jerusalem. He is at home in the localities of the holy
city and the neighborhood. He describes Bethesda as "a pool by the
sheep gate, having five porches" (5:2), Siloam as "a pool which is by
interpretation Sent" (9:7),
Solomon’s porch as being "in the Temple" (10:23), the brook Kedron "where was a garden"
(18:1); he
knows the location of the praetorium (18:28), the meaning of Gabbatha (19:13), and Golgotha (19:17), the distance of Bethany from Jerusalem
"about fifteen furlongs off" (11:18), and he distinguishes it from Bethany
beyond Jordan (1:28). He
gives the date when the Herodian reconstruction of the temple began
(2:19). He is
equally familiar with other parts of Palestine and makes no mistakes
such as are so often made by foreigners. He locates Cana in Galilee
(2:1; 4:26 21:2), to distinguish it from another Cana;
Aenon "near to Salim" where there are "many waters" (3:23); Sychar in Samaria near
"Jacob’s, well," and in view of Mount Gerizim (4:5). He knows the extent of the Lake of
Tiberias (6:19); he
describes Bethsaida as "the city of Andrew and Peter" (1:44), as distinct from Bethsaida Julias on
the eastern bank of the Jordan; he represents Nazareth as a place of
proverbial insignificance (1:46).

He is well acquainted with the confused
politico-ecclesiastical Messianic ideas and expectations of the Jews
(1:19–28, 45–49;
4:25; 6:14, 15 7:26; 12:34,
and other passages); with the hostility between Jews and Samaritans
(4:9, 20, 22 8:48); with Jewish usages and observances, as
baptism (1:25; 3:22, 23 4:2), purification (2:6; 3:25, etc.), ceremonial pollution
(18:28),
feasts (2:13, 23; 5:1 7:37, etc.), circumcision, and the Sabbath
(7:22, 23). He
is also acquainted with the marriage and burial rites (2:1–10;
11:17–44),
with the character of the Pharisees and their influence in the
Sanhedrin, the relationship between Annas and Caiaphas. The objection
of Bretschneider that he represents the office of the high-priest as an
annual office arose from a misunderstanding of the phrase "that
year" (11:49, 51 18:13), by which he means that
memorable year in which Christ died for the sins of the people.

3. The author was an eye-witness of most of
the events narrated. This appears from his life-like familiarity with
the acting persons, the Baptist, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael,
Thomas, Judas Iscariot, Pilate, Caiaphas, Annas, Nicodemus, Martha and
Mary, Mary Magdalene, the woman of Samaria, the man born blind; and
from the minute traits and vivid details which betray autopticity. He
incidentally notices what the Synoptists omit, that the traitor was
"the son of Simon" ( 6:71; 12:4; 13:2, 26 at Thomas was called "Didymus" (11:16; 20:24 21:2); while, on the other hand, he calls the
Baptist simply "John" ( he himself being the other John), without
adding to it the distinctive title as the Synoptists do more than a
dozen times to distinguish him from the son of Zebedee.10771077Johannes
alsder Erzählende,
in seinem Selbstbewusstsein, bedarf für den anderen
Johannes des Beinamens nicht, ihm liegt die Verwechslung ganz
fern." Hase, Geschichte Jesu, p.
48. The former belief of the venerable historian of Jena in the fall
Johannean authorship of the fourth Gospel was unfortunately shaken in
his conflict with the Tübingen giant, but he declares the
objections of Baur after all inconclusive, and seeks an escape from the
dilemma by the untenable compromise that the oral teaching of John a
few years after his death was committed to writing and somewhat
mystified by an able pupil. "Die
Botschaft hört er wohl, allein ihm fehlt der
Glaube." He
indicates the days and hours of certain events,10781078John 1:29, 35, 39, 43; 2:1;
4:6, 40, 43, 52; 6:22; 7:14, 37; 11:6, 17, 39; 12:1, 12; 13:30; 18:28;
19:31; 20:1, 19, 26; 21:4. and the exact or
approximate number of persons and objects mentioned.10791079John 1:35; 2:6; 4:18; 6:9, 10,
19; 19:23, 39; 21:8, 11. He was privy to
the thoughts of the disciples on certain occasions, their ignorance and
misunderstanding of the words of the Master,10801080John 2:17, 22; 4:27; 6:60;
12:16; 13:22, 28; 20:9; 21:12. and even to the motives
and feelings of the Lord.10811081John 2:24, 25; 4:1-3; 5:6;
6:6, 15; 7:1; 11:33, 38; 13:1, 3, 11, 21 16:19; 18:4; 19:28.

No literary artist could have invented the
conversation of Christ with Nicodemus on the mystery of spiritual
regeneration (John 3), or the
conversation with the woman of Samaria (John 4), or the characteristic details of the
catechization of the man born blind, which brings out so naturally the
proud and heartless bigotry of the Jewish hierarchy and the rough,
outspoken honesty and common sense of the blind man and his parents
(9:13–34). The scene at
Jacob’s well, described in John 4, presents a most
graphic, and yet unartificial picture of nature and human life as it
still remains, though in decay, at the foot of Gerizim and Ebal: there
is the well of Jacob in a fertile, well-watered valley, there the
Samaritan sanctuary on the top of Mount Gerizim, there the waving
grain-fields ripening for the harvest; we are confronted with the
historic antagonism of Jews and Samaritans which survives in the Nablus
of to-day; there we see the genuine humanity of Jesus, as he sat down
"wearied with his journey," though not weary of his work, his elevation
above the rabbinical prejudice of conversing with a woman, his
superhuman knowledge and dignity; there is the curiosity and
quick-wittedness of the Samaritan Magdalene; and how natural is the
transition from the water of Jacob’s well to the water
of life, and from the hot dispute of the place of worship to the
highest conception of God as an omnipresent spirit, and his true
worship in spirit and in truth.10821082 "How often has this fourth
chapter been read since by Christian pilgrims on the very spot where
the Saviour rested, with the irresistible impression that every word is
true and adapted to the time and place, yet applicable to all times and
places. Jacob’s well is now in ruins and no more used,
but the living spring of water which the Saviour first opened there to
a poor, sinful, yet penitent woman is as deep and fresh as ever, and
will quench the thirst of souls to the end of time." So I wrote in 1871
for the English edition of Lange’s Com. on
John, p. 151. Six years afterward I fully realized my
anticipations, when with a company of friends I sat down on
Jacob’s well and read John 4 as I never read it
before. Palestine, even in "the imploring beauty of decay," is indeed a
"fifth Gospel" which sheds more light on the four than many a
commentary brimful of learning and critical conjectures.

4. The writer represents himself expressly as
an eye-witness of the life of Christ. He differs from the Synoptists,
who never use the first person nor mix their subjective feelings with
the narrative. "We beheld his glory," he says, in the name of all
the apostles and primitive disciples, in stating the general impression
made upon them by the incarnate Logos dwelling.10831083John 1:14: ἐθεασάμεθα
τὴν
δόξαν.
θεάομαι
is richer than ὁράω, and
means to behold or contemplate with admiration and delight. The plural
adds force to the statement, as in 21:24; 1 John 1:1; 2 Pet.
1:16. And in the parallel
passage of the first Epistle, which is an inseparable companion of the
fourth Gospel, he asserts with solemn emphasis his personal knowledge
of the incarnate Word of life whom he heard with his ears and saw with
his eyes and handled with his hands (1 John
1:1–3). This
assertion is general, and covers the whole public life of our Lord. But
he makes it also in particular a case of special interest for the
realness of Christ’s humanity; in recording the flow
of blood and water from the wounded side, he adds emphatically: "He
that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true: and
he knoweth that he saith things that are true, that ye also may
believe" (John 19:35).
Here we are driven to the alternative: either the writer was a true
witness of what he relates, or he was a false witness who wrote down a
deliberate lie.

5. Finally, the writer intimates that he is one of
the Twelve, that he is one of the favorite three, that he is not
Peter, nor James, that he is none other than the beloved John who
leaned on the Master’s bosom. He never names himself,
nor his brother James, nor his mother Salome, but he has a very modest,
delicate, and altogether unique way of indirect self-designation. He
stands behind his Gospel like a mysterious figure with a thin veil over
his face without ever lifting the veil. He leaves the reader to infer
the name by combination. He is undoubtedly that unnamed disciple who,
with Andrew, was led to Jesus by the testimony of the Baptist on the
banks of the Jordan (1:35–40), the disciple who at the last
Supper "was reclining at the table in Jesus’ bosom"
(13:23–25), that "other disciple" who, with
Peter, followed Jesus into the court of the high-priest (18:15, 16), who stood by the cross and was
intrusted by the dying Lord with the care of His mother (19:26, 27), and that "other disciple whom
Jesus loved," who went with Peter to the empty sepulchre on the
resurrection morning and was convinced of the great fact by the sight
of the grave-cloths, and the head-cover rolled up in a place by itself
(20:2–8). All these narratives are interwoven
with autobiographic details. He calls himself "the disciple whom Jesus
loved," not from vanity (as has been most strangely asserted by some
critics), but in blessed and thankful remembrance of the infinite mercy
of his divine Master who thus fulfilled the prophecy of his name
Johanan, i.e., Jehovah is gracious. In that peculiar love of his
all-beloved Lord was summed up for him the whole significance of his
life.

With this mode of self-designation corresponds the
designation of members of his family: his mother is probably meant by
the unnamed "sister of the mother" of Jesus, who stood by the cross
(John
19:25), for Salome was there,
according to the Synoptists, and John would hardly omit this fact; and
in the list of the disciples to whom Jesus appeared at the Lake of
Galilee, "the sons of Zebedee" are put last (21:2), when yet in all the Synoptic lists of
the apostles they are, with Peter and Andrew, placed at the head of the
Twelve. This difference can only be explained from motives of delicacy
and modesty.

What a contrast the author presents to those
pseudonymous literary forgers of the second and third centuries, who
unscrupulously put their writings into the mouth of the apostles or
other honored names to lend them a fictitious charm and authority; and
yet who cannot conceal the fraud which leaks out on every page.

Conclusion.

A review of this array of testimonies, external
and internal, drives us to the irresistible conclusion that the fourth
Gospel is the work of John, the apostle. This view is clear,
self-consistent, and in full harmony with the character of the book and
the whole history of the apostolic age; while the hypothesis of a
literary fiction and pious fraud is contradictory, absurd, and
self-condemned. No writer in the second century could have produced
such a marvellous book, which towers high above all the books of Justin
Martyr and Irenaeus and Tertullian and Clement and Origen, or any other
father or schoolman or reformer. No writer in the first century could
have written it but an apostle, and no apostle but John, and John
himself could not have written it without divine inspiration.

1040 "Sic enim non solum visorem, sed et auditorem, sed et scriptorem
omnium mirabilium Domini per ordinem profitetur." See the Latin text as published by Tregelles, also in
Charteris, l.c., p. 3, and the translation of Westcott,
History of the Canon, p. 187.

1047H. E., III. 24. Jerome
repeats this view and connects it with the antiheretical aim, De
vir. illustr., c. 9, comp. Com. in Matt. Proaem. Theodore of
Mopsuestia thought that John intended to supplement the Synoptists
chiefly by the discourses on the divinity of Christ. See
Fritzsche’s ed. of fragments of his Commentaries on
the New Test., Turici, p. 19 sq. (quoted by Hilgenfeld,
Einleitung, p. 696).

1050 DeWette says that the
discourses of Christ in John shine with more than earthly brilliancy
(sie strahlen in mehr als
irdischem Brillantfeuer, Exeg. Handbuch, I.3, p. 7). Holtzmann: "The fundamental ideas of the fourth
Gospel lie far beyond the horizon of the church in the second century,
and indeed of the whole Christian church down to the present day" (in
Schenkel’s "Bibel. Lexik.," II. 234). Baur and Keim
(I. 133) give the Gospel the highest praise asa philosophy of religion,
but deny its historical value.

1052 Notwithstanding such passages
Dr. Davidson asserts (II. 278): "In uniting the only-begotten Son of
God with the historical Jesus, the evangelist implies the absence of
full humanity. The personality consists essentially of the Logos, the
flesh being only a temporary thing. Body, soul, and spirit do not
belong to Jesus Christ; he is the Logos incarnate for a time, who soon
returns to the original state of oneness with the Father."

1053 Lange, Westcott, Milligan and
Moulton dwell at length on this feature.

John 2:19: Jesus answered and said
unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it
up.Matt. 26:61: This man said, I am
able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days. Cf.
Mark 14:58; 15:29.

3:18: He that believeth on him is
not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already.Mark 16:16: He that believeth and
is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be
condemned.

4:44: For Jesus himself testified
that a prophet hath no honor in his own country.Matt. 15:57: But Jesus said unto
them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in
his own house. Cf. Mark 6:4; Luke 4:24

6:35: He that cometh to me shall
not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.Matt. 5:6; Luke 6:21: Blessed are
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be
filled.

6:37: All that which the Father
giveth me shall come unto me; and him that cometh unto me I will in no
wise cast out.Matt. 11:28, 29: Come unto me, an
ye that labor and are heavy laden, ... and ye shall find rest unto your
souls.

6:46: Not that any man hath seen
the Father, save he which is from God, he hath seen the Father. Cf.
1:18: No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is
in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.Matt. 11:27: And no one knoweth the
Son, save the Father, neither doth any know the Father, save the Son,
and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.

12:8: For the poor ye have always
with you; but me ye have not always.Matt. 26:11: For ye have the poor
always with you; but me ye have not always. Cf. Mark 14:7.

12:25: He that loveth his life
loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto
life eternal.Matt. 10: 39: He that findeth his
life shall lose it; and he thatloseth his life for my sake shall find
it. Cf. 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; 17:83.

12:27: Now is my soul troubled; and
what shall say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came
I unto this hour.Matt. 26:38: Then saith he unto
them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Cf. Mark
14:84.

13:3: Jesus knowing that the Father
had given all things into his hands ....Matt. 11:27: All things have been
delivered unto me of my Father.

13:16: Verily, verily I say unto
you, A servant is not greater than his lord.Matt. 10:24: A disciple is not
above his master, nor a servant above his lord. Cf. Luke
6:40.

13:20: He that receiveth whomsoever
I send receiveth me; and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent
me.Matt. 10:40: He that receiveth you
receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent
me.

14:18: I will not leave you
desolate; I come unto you. Cf. 14:23: We will ... make our abode with
him.Matt. 28:20: I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world.

15:21: But all these things will
they do unto you for my name’s sake.Matt. 10:22: And ye shall be hated
of all men for my name’s make.

17:2: Even as thou gavest him
authority over all flesh.Matt. 28:18: All authority hath
been given unto me in heaven and on earth.

1058 For further particulars of
John’s style see my Companion tothe Study of the
Greek Test., pp. 66-75, where the opinions of Renan, Ewald,
Luthardt, Keim, Godet, Westcott, Hase, and Weiss are given on the
subject.

1059 See the literary notices on p.
405 sqq. To the able vindications of the genuineness of John there
mentioned must now be added the masterly discussion of Dr. Weiss in his
Leben Jesu (vol. I., 1882, pp. 84-124), which has just come to
hand.

1061 His quotation is considered
the earliest by name; but Irenaeus, who wrote between 177 and 192,
represents an older tradition, and proves to his satisfaction that
there must be just four Gospels to answer the four cherubim in
Ezekiel’s vision. Adv. Haer., III. 1, 1;
11, 8; V. 36, 2.

1063 The use of the Gospel of John
by Justin Martyr was doubted by Baur and most of his followers, but is
admitted by Hilgenfeld and Keim. It was again denied by the anonymous
author of "Supernatural Religion," and by Edwin A. Abbott (in the art.
Gospels, "Enc. Brit.," vol. X 821), and again conclusively
proven by Sanday in England, and Ezra Abbot in America.

1064 The quotation is not literal
but from memory, like most of his quotations: Justin, Apol., I. 61: "For
Christ also said, Except ye beborn again [ἀναγεννηθῆτε, comp. 1 Pet. 3:23], ye shall in no wise enter
[εἰσέλθῆτε, but comp. the same word In John 8:5 and 7] into the
kingdom of heaven (the phrase of Matthew]. Now that it is
impossible for those who have once been born to re-enter the wombs of
those that bare them is manifest to all."John 3:3, 4: "Jesus answered
and said to him [Nicodemus], Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
man be born anew [or from above, γεννηθῇ
ἄνωθεν], he cannot see [ἰδεῖν 3: 5, enter into] the kingdom of God. Nicodemus
saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a
second time into his mother’s womb and be
born?" Much account has been made by the
Tübingen critics of the slight differences in the
quotation (ἀναγεννηθῆτε
for γεννηθῇ
ἄνωθεν,
εἰσελθεῖν
for ἰδεῖν
and βασιλεία
τῶν
οὐρανῶν for βας. τοῦ
θεοῦ) to disprove
the connection, or, as this is impossible, to prove the dependence of
John on Justin! But Dr. Abbot, a most accurate and conscientious
scholar, who moreover as a Unitarian cannot be charged with an orthodox
bias, has produced many parallel cases of free quotations of the same
passage not only from patristic writers, but even from modem divines,
including no less than nine quotations of the passage by Jeremy Taylor,
only two of which are alike. I think he has conclusively proven his
case for every reasonable mind. See his invaluable monograph on The
Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, pp. 28 sqq. and 91 sqq. Comp. also
Weiss, Leben Jesu, I. 83, who sees in Justin Martyr not only "an
unquestionable allusion to the Nicodemus story of the fourth Gospel,"
but other isolated reminiscences

1065 Comp. such expressions as "I
desire bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ ... and I
desire as drink His blood, which is love imperishable," Ad Rom.,
ch. 7, with John 6:47 sqq.; "living water," Ad Rom. 7, with John
4:10, 11; "being Himself the Door of the Father," Ad Philad., 9,
with John 10:9; [the Spirit] "knows whence it cometh and whither it
goeth," Ad Philad., 7, with John 3:8. I quoted from the text of
Zahn. See the able art. of Lightfoot in "Contemp. Rev." for February,
1875, and his S. Ignatius, 1885.

1066 Polyc., Ad Phil., ch.
7: "Every one that doth not confess that Jesus Christ hath come in the
flesh is Antichrist; and whosoever doth not confess the mystery of the
cross is of the devil." Comp. 1 John 4:3. On the testimony of Polycarp
see Lightfoot in the "Contemp. Rev." for May, 1875. Westcott, p. xxx,
says: "A testimony to one" (the Gospel or the first Ep.) "is
necessarily by inference a testimony to the other."

1067 According to Eusebius, III.
39. See Lightfoot in the "Contemp. Rev." for August and October,
1875.

1068 Eusebius, H. E., III.
39, closes his account of Papias with the notice: "He has likewise set
forth another narrative [in his Exposition of the
Lord’s Oracles] concerning a woman who was
maliciously accused before the Lord touching many sins, which is
contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews."

1069 In a tradition too late (ninth
century) to be of any critical weight, Papias is even made the
amanuensis of John in the preparation of his Gospel. A Vatican Codex
(of Queen Christina of Sweden) has this marginal gloss: "Evangelium
Johannis manifestatum et datum est ecclesiis ab Johanne adhuc in
corpore constituto; sicut Papiss, nomine Hieropolitanus discipulus
Johannis carus, in exotericis [exegeticis],id est in
extremis, quinque libris retulit [referring no doubt to the five
books of Λογίων
Κυριακῶν
ἐξηγήσεις] Descripsit vero evangelium dictante Johanne
recte." This was hailed as a direct
testimony of Papias for John by Prof. Aberle (Rom. Cath.) in the "
Tübing. Quartalschrift," 1864, No. 1, but set aside by
Hilgenfeld versus Aberle, in his " Zeitschrift," 1865, pp. 77
sqq., and Hase, l.c, p. 35. If Eusebius had found this notice in
the work of Papias, he would have probably mentioned it in connection
with his testimonies on the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. But see
Westcott, Canon, 5th ed., p. 77, note 1.

1070 See
Schürer’s Latin dissertation De
controversiis paschalibus, etc., Leipz., 1869, and the German
translation in the "Zeitschrift für Hist. Theol." for 1970,
pp. 182-284.

1071 In the last portion of the
book, discovered and first published by Dressel (XIX. 22). This
discovery has induced Hilgenfeld to retract his former denial of the
quotations in the earlier books, Einleit. in d. N. T., p,
43 sq., note.

1076 See the careful analysis of
the passages by Westcott, Intr., pp. xiii sqq.

1077Johannes
alsder Erzählende,
in seinem Selbstbewusstsein, bedarf für den anderen
Johannes des Beinamens nicht, ihm liegt die Verwechslung ganz
fern." Hase, Geschichte Jesu, p.
48. The former belief of the venerable historian of Jena in the fall
Johannean authorship of the fourth Gospel was unfortunately shaken in
his conflict with the Tübingen giant, but he declares the
objections of Baur after all inconclusive, and seeks an escape from the
dilemma by the untenable compromise that the oral teaching of John a
few years after his death was committed to writing and somewhat
mystified by an able pupil. "Die
Botschaft hört er wohl, allein ihm fehlt der
Glaube."

1082 "How often has this fourth
chapter been read since by Christian pilgrims on the very spot where
the Saviour rested, with the irresistible impression that every word is
true and adapted to the time and place, yet applicable to all times and
places. Jacob’s well is now in ruins and no more used,
but the living spring of water which the Saviour first opened there to
a poor, sinful, yet penitent woman is as deep and fresh as ever, and
will quench the thirst of souls to the end of time." So I wrote in 1871
for the English edition of Lange’s Com. on
John, p. 151. Six years afterward I fully realized my
anticipations, when with a company of friends I sat down on
Jacob’s well and read John 4 as I never read it
before. Palestine, even in "the imploring beauty of decay," is indeed a
"fifth Gospel" which sheds more light on the four than many a
commentary brimful of learning and critical conjectures.

1083John 1:14: ἐθεασάμεθα
τὴν
δόξαν.
θεάομαι
is richer than ὁράω, and
means to behold or contemplate with admiration and delight. The plural
adds force to the statement, as in 21:24; 1 John 1:1; 2 Pet.
1:16.